From local gym to global brand

Phillip Mills

Business success has followed sporting success for Auckland's Mills family.

Father Les is well known in his sporting capacity, having represented the country in weightlifting and discus at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games before trying his hand developing a fitness empire and, later, as Auckland City mayor.

Now his son, Phillip, a former Commonwealth Games hurdler, has blended that particular Mills sporting prowess and entrepreneurial ability to such a degree that his father's name is a global fitness brand.

Each week, more than four million people in gyms from Scandinavia to Brazil are pumping, stepping and dancing to the beat of the Les Mills group fitness classes Phillip, 50, and his wife, Jackie, pioneered in the 1980s.

The company turns over $100 million annually, runs eight New Zealand gyms and has spawned a worldwide community of more than 55,000 Les Mills trainers and instructors.

Phillip Mills, the Ernst & Young-sponsored entrepreneur of the year in 2004, sees his achievements since he took the reins in 1993 as simply building on his father's success or "standing on the shoulders of giants".

"I came along and got to start with everything my father finished with. A lot of it is just that."

In his youth, Phillip Mills had several career options.

The hurdler was awarded an athletic scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles where he studied philosophy and managed Kiwi rock band Hello Sailor in his final year.

But when he returned home as a graduate in 1979, joining the family business wasn't really in question.

Although the music scene had interested him, its unhealthy lifestyle led him to leave it behind.

"It was a lot of late nights in smoky bars and drinking. It really was the unhealthiness of the industry that turned me off."

Instead, what he brought back from the US was inspiration from the aerobics craze in its infancy there.

Managing the band had given him a good feel for staging rock concerts and shows, and he used this to create "exertainment" - exercise routines choreographed to music to make the pain and drudgery of exercise less onerous.

"That's what got me excited, bringing a whole new dimension of entertainment into exercise."

His mother Colleen, also a Commonwealth Games athlete, who died last year, helped early on with instructor training and teaching fitness classes until she turned 60.

There are now seven trademarked Les Mills fitness classes, with barbell class Bodypump the single biggest branded exercise in the world.

Each is refreshed with new songs and choreography quarterly, licensed to a network of international agents and used in almost 10,000 fitness clubs in 55 countries.

The growth and reach of the classes is where Mills has put his own stamp on his father's name.

"That's where Les Mills has been my company. We're the leaders in group exercise."

Although a family fascination, the fitness business was a shift from the Mills' earlier property development, home appliance and shoe-store ventures.

Phillip started out cleaning toilets at Mills' first Victoria St, Auckland gym, as a 14-year-old.

His love for the company saw him progressively buy back the local gyms after the investment companies with a controlling interest in the then-listed company went into receivership after the 1987 sharemarket crash.

Between 1990 and 2000, he invested more than $50 million on their redevelopment and, in 1996, formed the Les Mills International company he chairs to market the fitness programmes worldwide. From his "extremely intelligent" father he has learned a lot. "He's an entrepreneur, a marketeer and a very hard worker. A lot of those things you pick up unconsciously as well as the practicalities of how to run a business that you learn intellectually. It just gets into your system."

Now Phillip is aiming to put Les Mills among the top five global fitness brands and plans to have its products in 25,000 clubs by 2015.

Beyond this pursuit, Mills is deeply concerned about the economic impacts of environmental issues such as global warming and rampant consumerism.

"I think business has got to get this. There will be no economy in 50 years if we don't seriously address this stuff."

The challenge of sedentary populations and obesity is one area where he sees his company can make a difference. "Governments are not going to be able to afford the spiralling health costs of obesity-related health problems. People are going to have to learn to walk more lightly on the face of the earth - figuratively and literally.

"It's a bit of a naff way of putting it, I suppose, but we see what we're doing as important in that we're trying to get a lot more people moving and a lot more people exercising."

Moral justification was something he had always sought from a career.

"I think that's important for any business person. To be successful, you have to have a lot of belief in where you're going to keep yourself going, let alone to inspire other people."

Certainly he has inspired those closest to him, and the vision looks set to stay in the family with his 17-year-old son, "Young Les", and 19-year-old daughter on the staff and voicing interest in fitness industry careers.